


An Ounce of Prevention

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Competency, Crossover, Diary/Journal, Espionage, Ethical Dilemmas, Female Protagonist, Gen, Horcruxes, Mental Coercion, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation, Missions, Ninja, POV Female Character, Responsibility, Slice of Life, Suspicions, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-21
Updated: 2008-07-06
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 20,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1195983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the timeskip, Sakura finds a very interesting diary among Tsunade's books and papers.  Trouble ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Ounce of Prevention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/gifts).



> This was a slightly belated birthday gift for Asuka Kureru, who asked for a crack Naruto/HP crossover. I don't know how I did on the crack factor, but I did manage the crossover part. Sort of.
> 
> "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series -- that is, it takes place during the _Naruto_ timeskip and before _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_. All characters and props will end up in the right places and conditions for Naruto's return to Konoha and the Weasleys' trip to Diagon Alley in 1992.

Sakura examined the strange book she'd found in Tsunade's file room earlier that afternoon, turning it over in her hands. She'd been looking for an obscure medical text on the use of insects to treat infections, and the thin, shabby book had fallen off the top shelf and hit her shoulder.

It seemed to be a diary, but its previous owner hadn't written anything but his name. He had odd handwriting -- the strokes of his characters were thin and angular, as if he'd been writing with an overly stiff brush.

Maybe he'd used a quill or one of the pens that were becoming popular for quick notes, Sakura concluded. She ran her hand along the diary's spine and flipped the pages in a cascade, enjoying the rustle of paper.

"Hanjimono Tomu," she said, reading the brief inscription on the inside cover. It was a nice name. Tomu, to become rich -- perhaps his mother had dreamed of a bright future and named her son with her hopes. Hanjimono, a puzzle, an enigma -- the diary certainly was a puzzle. She wondered why Tomu hadn't used it. She wondered how it had ended up in Tsunade's hands. A gift for her services as a healer? Gambling winnings? Tsunade never won anything normal or easily converted into cash, after all.

In any case, Sakura had thought for a while now that it might be useful to keep a record of her studies under Tsunade, to organize her thoughts and make notes of things she wanted to research further -- things that might let her help Naruto search for Sasuke, or help Sasuke recover once they brought him home. There was so much to learn, and so little time.

She might as well use Tomu's diary for her notes. It would be a shame for such a well-made book to remain empty.

She opened the diary, inked her brush, and began. _"Today Tsunade-shishou asked me what medic-nin should do if they are injured in ways that block their ability to manipulate chakra, or are caught in seals that--"_

Sakura hurled the diary across the room, drew a kunai, and set her hands in the dispelling seal. "Kai!"

Nothing changed. The diary lay inert on her floor, halfway between the dresser and her closet.

Nonetheless, Sakura approached it warily. Normal diaries did not absorb ink as if they were drinking.

Thin, angular characters welled up through the page. _\--Hello? Is anyone there?--_

"Yes," Sakura said.

The diary did not seem to have heard. Words continued seeping onto the page, even as the first lines sank back into the depths of the book. _\--Hello? Please write to me; I'm trapped in this diary, and I can only read what you write in its pages. I haven't talked to anyone for years. My name is Hanjimono Tomu. Who are you? Will you tell me your name?--_

That was out of the question; no ninja would give her name to an unknown, potentially dangerous person or creature. However, it would be wasteful to destroy the diary before learning what jutsu had been used to create it. And perhaps this entity claiming to be Hanjimono Tomu was the soul of a person who'd been trapped by a seal. If so, it was Sakura's responsibility to learn the technique and inform Tsunade, who could then decide whether or not to declare it forbidden... and whether or not to release the person it trapped.

Nothing said that Tomu had been trapped unfairly, after all.

Sakura laid the diary back on her desk and inked her brush. _"Hello, Tomu. My friends call me Hana."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clear up any potential confusion: yes, Hanjimono Tomu _is_ Tom Riddle. I translated and transliterated his name into Japanese because it amused me. Then I had to think up a reason for the change, which became a minor plot point later on.


	2. When in Rome

Sakura kept her first conversation with Tomu short, no more than fifteen minutes. By the end of that, she'd determined that even if Tomu wasn't a real person -- he claimed to be a memory imprint of sorts -- he had too much personality to be a mere construct. It would take years of a person's life to power this sort of seal.

Sakura was more suspicious than ever.

And yet.

She liked Tomu. He was intelligent. He was polite. He didn't shove into her personal space, or ignore her, or treat her like she was helpless. He knew nothing about chakra, but his people evidently knew something about energy manipulation -- they called it magic and directed it with physical aids instead of via their bodies -- and he had suggested a possible solution to Tsunade's question of what medic-nin should do if they were temporarily unable to manipulate chakra. Pre-set seals, with simple vocal or physical triggers, wouldn't solve every variation of that problem, but they were definitely worth looking into, along with more traditional herbal remedies and surgical techniques.

"I almost hate to tell Tsunade-shishou about you," Sakura said to the closed diary. "Of course, that's exactly why I have to tell her -- if you can cast genjutsu that subtle, we can't possibly trust you, or trust me so long as I'm in contact with you." She nodded, gripped the book tightly to make sure she wouldn't 'forget' to bring it to the Hokage's tower, and scrambled out her window.

It would've been just as easy to take the door, but what was the point of being a ninja if you couldn't have fun with it now and then?

Tsunade was busy with paperwork when Sakura arrived, but she waved off Sakura's habitual apology for interrupting. "I hate this stuff," she said, dumping one pile on top of another in order to clear some space. "At least you're interesting, even when you're being dense. What's the problem this time?"

Sakura took a deep breath, reminded herself that Tsunade was 1) the Fifth Hokage, 2) her teacher, and 3) just like that, and laid Tomu's diary on the desk. "It's not a problem, exactly," she said, "or at least, it isn't a problem yet. I found this book in your file room -- I thought I'd use it as a journal or remedy book -- but it's not an ordinary book. There's a very complicated seal on it that preserves and animates the memory of a boy named Hanjimono Tomu. He can carry on true conversations, and he can _learn_. And there are no physical traces of the seal on the book, just an inscription of his name."

Tsunade's breath hissed between her suddenly clenched teeth. "You realize what you're implying?"

Sakura nodded. "It's a life-powered jutsu. Which means it was a group effort, cast by a jinchuuriki, fueled by several years of the creator's life... or fueled by someone else's death." She hoped Tomu hadn't set the seal. He could be a good friend, and she didn't want to betray--

"Kai!" Sakura held the dispelling seal for a count of ten, and then bit the inside of her mouth to make sure her mind was clear. Tsunade arched one perfect brow, and Sakura hurried to explain. "There's also a genjutsu on the book; it makes me like Tomu, makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt and not tell people about him. I think it's important to find out how the diary was created and where it came from, but..."

"We'll have to set a guard on you," Tsunade agreed. She opened the diary and traced one finger over the inscription on the inside cover. "Hanjimono Tomu. Strange. Now that I think of it, I remember this book. It fell through a portal when I summoned a wave of slugs several years ago, and none of them could tell me where it was originally from. It's as if somebody tried to get rid of it by transporting it without an endpoint to the jutsu, letting it drift in non-space forever; it's pure luck that the backwash of my summoning pulled it out."

She looked up and pinned Sakura with her eyes. "That's not what worries me. What worries me is that when the book appeared, this inscription was written in a foreign language, in a syllabary I'd never seen before. Now it's in kanji. As you just inadvertently proved, it's a real translation, not an illusion. I want to know when and how this Tomu learned our language."

Sakura nodded. "Yes, Tsunade-shishou. Um. I'll have to reveal some information to get answers. What needs to stay secret?"

"For the moment, I'll trust your judgment," Tsunade said, handing the book back to Sakura. "Write to him no more than half an hour each day, and report the conversations to me at the beginning of your training sessions. If the guard wants to read over your shoulder, let him or her; that will be an added layer of caution."

Then Tsunade grinned and leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms over her head. "I'll pick someone tonight, and you can hash out details after training tomorrow. Consider this a B-rank mission, with pay retroactive through this afternoon -- but don't think I'll go easy on you just because you have something to do besides dreaming about Sasuke and waiting for Naruto to come home."

Sakura flushed, bowed, and left as quickly as possible.


	3. Imitation Is

Sakura ate dinner with her parents, and then excused herself to study. By now, her family knew better than to interrupt her when she was working with finicky medical ninjutsu, so she could write to Tomu without fear of discovery. It would be more prudent to wait until tomorrow, to make sure the guard could monitor her words and behavior, but... she wanted to get a better feel for her new opponent. And fifteen minutes -- she set her alarm clock to make sure she didn't get distracted -- probably wouldn't hurt.

She laid the diary on her desk, braced herself, and set her brush against the page.

_"Tomu? Are you there?"_

The characters sank into the paper and new ones welled to the surface. _\--Yes. Hello, Hana. Thank you for taking the time to write to me.--_

_"It's no bother. I only have lessons in the mornings, and I can't practice all afternoon and evening. Normally I'd spend time with some friends, but they're out of town right now."_ Actually, only Team 8 was out on a retrieval mission -- Gai's team and Team 10 were around and, to hear Ino tell it, bored out of their minds training for the upcoming chuunin exam -- but there was no need for Tomu to know that.

_\--Is it hard, learning to be a medic-nin? It seems very complicated. Do you attend a school for that, or are you apprenticed to a master?--_

An interesting question, Sakura thought. Tomu's country must have schools that taught more than just basic subjects -- they might be like the engineering colleges various daimyos and businessmen sponsored in order to produce marvels without chakra. But to teach medical ninjutsu in a school? How peculiar.

_"I'm Tsunade-shishou's apprentice,"_ she wrote. She frowned, and decided to offer a bit of information. _"It's a great honor to be chosen, since I'm young and not a chuunin yet, and she's very famous and strong. I work as hard as I can, so she won't regret agreeing to train me."_

There was a pause as her words sank into the paper. Then, _\--If it's not rude, may I ask how old you are?--_ Tomu wrote. _\--You seem very mature to me.--_

Flattery. Welcome flattery, but blatantly obvious. Sakura grinned, and inked her brush. _"I just turned fourteen,"_ she wrote. _"How old are you?"_

_\--I was sixteen when I was copied into this diary, but I've been in here for a very long time. The odd thing is that while I know time has passed, I don't feel as if I've gotten older.--_

If true, and not just a play for sympathy, that was very interesting. Any information on the limits of this memory imprint seal would be useful in establishing lines of research.

_"How does that work?"_ she asked. _"If time passes, your mind grows older even if you have no body. Logically, you shouldn't be sixteen anymore."_

_\--Logic and magic rarely have much to do with each other,--_ Tomu wrote with a wry air. Sakura nodded in rueful recognition -- chakra and logic had a similarly troubled relationship -- and then frowned. How could writing carry a vocal inflection?

"Kai," she whispered, and reached across her desk to prick her finger on a kunai. The pain was mild, an old friend, but it helped clear her head.

_"That must be confusing for you,"_ she wrote. _"It's confusing enough being fourteen once -- I wouldn't want to be a teenager for decades! My parents and all my teachers say everything seems out of proportion when you're young, and my life has enough drama on its own; I'd like to be sure I'm not exaggerating my problems out of perspective."_

There -- what would he make of the bait?

_\--I doubt two extra years give me much more perspective,--_ Tomu wrote after a moment, _\--but if you tell me more, I'd be happy to help, Hana. If nothing else, I've found that talking through a problem can make it easier to deal with, and I have all the time in the world to listen.--_

Sakura swore Tomu was smiling, wherever he really was. That was unnerving, but she didn't care at the moment.

"You're fishing, too," she murmured, "but you're not very good at this, are you? I think you and Hana will become _very_ close friends -- the kind who tell each other everything."

If he was an enemy, he'd never see the trap waiting until it snapped shut. She'd pull the tripwire herself rather than let him hurt anyone in Konoha.

But Sakura hoped it wouldn't come to that. She'd had enough of betrayal.

_"Thank you, Tomu,"_ she wrote. _"It's always good to find new friends."_


	4. Birds of a Feather

By the end of her morning training with Tsunade, Sakura was dripping with sweat and panting despite her best efforts at breath control. It was _hard_ trying to dodge her teacher with her inner coils misaligned to simulate injury, and it was even harder trying to 'heal' herself in the middle of a fight.

"Someday you'll have to do this for real," Tsunade said mercilessly when Sakura collapsed for the third time, "and if you have to figure it out then, the odds are nearly one hundred percent against you. And don't say anything about me and gambling -- missions are no place for luck, just skill and planning and preparation. Get up and try again."

Sakura obeyed.

Finally she managed to unblock herself enough to strike a nasty blow against Tsunade's shoulder. Anyone else would have been sent flying across the clearing; Tsunade, of course, had another trick up her sleeve, and somehow dissipated the chakra as Sakura's fist made contact with her skin.

Sakura gaped. "What on earth...?"

"That's a lesson for next month, if you do well," Tsunade said with a smile like a satisfied cat. "We're done for today; come here so I can unscramble your coils. I have drinks in my office, and," -- her smile faded into a grimace -- "Shizune almost certainly has paperwork waiting for me. I should never have agreed to take this job. Stupid kid and his stupid challenges."

"Naruto gets to you like that," Sakura said, trying to hide her own smile.

"No backtalk," Tsunade said, and started realigning Sakura's chakra system. It got much easier to catch her breath after that.

Sakura followed Tsunade back to the Hokage's tower, wondering who her new guard would be. This mission needed at least a chuunin, for security clearance if nothing else, but a jounin would probably be overkill -- anyone could sit around and watch her write in a diary, after all. The main guard would probably be spelled by others who'd just watch from a distance to make sure she didn't sneak in any more unscheduled conversations with Tomu, and that job could definitely be done by genin.

Shizune ambushed them in the corridor outside Tsunade's office and shoved a stack of papers into the Fifth Hokage's hands. Tsunade groaned. "I wanted to review today's lesson, but it looks like that will have to wait for tomorrow," she told Sakura. "I want a full explanation of why your final effort succeeded while the others failed, and some thoughts on what you could have done better. And I want a preliminary report on that book -- your guard should be waiting at the mission center."

Sakura bowed and ducked out a nearby window before Shizune could lecture her about the importance of making sure her lessons didn't run overtime and cut into the rest of Tsunade's schedule. She liked Shizune, and she understood how busy Tsunade ought to be -- running the business end of a hidden village wasn't nearly as easy as Naruto had always made it sound -- but she thought Shizune took the wrong approach to managing Tsunade. Shizune often seemed on the edge of exploding from sheer frustration, and Sakura didn't want to be around when the woman finally blew.

It was a beautiful spring day -- warm sunshine, clear blue skies, a hint of cool breeze to keep the air fresh -- and Sakura leaped from roof to roof, reveling in the illusion of flight, the pleasant burn of exertion, and the smooth flow of chakra through her body. Civilians never knew what they were missing, she thought, glancing down as she soared over a street -- never knew the freedom or the bonds only shinobi teams could forge. There was a heavy price for being ninja, true, but she'd pay it again in a heartbeat.

She dropped to the earth in front of the mission center, straightened her dress, and walked inside in search of her new guard -- or, rather, her new mission partner. Temporary partners weren't the same as a team, and of course no one could replace Sasuke and Naruto, but even if Tomu proved an enemy, she might gain a friend from this situation.

Iruka-sensei was manning the desk today. She smiled brightly at him. He smiled back, tentatively, and then looked down at a sheaf of papers in his hands. "Haruno Sakura, B-class intelligence mission, details classified. Your partner..." Iruka-sensei flushed a brilliant red across his nose, and Sakura's heart sank.

"If you say Kakashi, I'm going to _cripple_ Tsunade-shishou. I don't care if she is Hokage and one of the legendary Sannin!"

"It's not Kakashi-san," Iruka-sensei said. "Um. Your partner--"

"--is me," a woman finished, her hands falling on either side of Sakura's neck and squeezing her shoulders.

Sakura jerked loose and whirled to face the intruder, hands dropping reflexively to her kunai holster before her conscious mind caught up and reined in her adrenaline. After a second, the woman's face and skintight fishnet clothes matched up to a name and a history. Sakura dropped her kunai. "Oh _fuck_."

"That's no way to start our partnership! You're way too uptight. But I've worked with worse -- don't worry, by the time we're done, I'll have you all straightened out." Mitarashi Anko raised a half-empty sake bottle, and grinned.

In the background, Iruka-sensei covered his face with his papers.


	5. Assumptions Make

"This is a three-phase mission," Anko told Sakura as she shoved open the mission center doors. "Phase one, figure out the seal on that book. Phase two, figure out Hanjimono Tomu's origin and history. Those are mostly your problem, but I've seen a lot of weird shit in my day, so keep me in the loop. Phase three is me keeping an eye on you to make sure you don't go bugfuck crazy, turn traitor, or just get stupid and let things slip."

Anko's phrasing was a little unprofessional, but the analysis was spot-on, Sakura thought. Well, there had to be a reason the woman was a special jounin, right? Maybe this wouldn't be too awful.

"I can't tell if you're acting suspicious unless I know your normal behavior patterns. So I'm moving in with you," Anko concluded.

"WHAT?" Sakura stopped dead in the middle of the street, and then hastily jumped to a roof to avoid people's curious stares. "I think I misheard you," she said when Anko followed her. "Why would you move in with me?"

"For the mission," Anko said in a tone of oppressed reasonableness. "Unless you'd rather stay at my apartment? I don't care either way, but we're going to live together. Genin observers are a good supplement, but you're effectively high chuunin level -- I checked your stats -- and I can't monitor things like breathing patterns and bad dreams from a distance."

"But--"

"But nothing. Security can't be taken lightly, and you never know what delayed effects seals can have." Anko pointed a long, sharp-nailed finger at Sakura, her expression abruptly serious. "The day you have _half_ my experience with psychological manipulation and coercion, you can question my judgment, but unless your parents are sleeper agents or that loudmouth teammate of yours turns traitor and talks you into joining Akatsuki, you won't _get_ that experience for at least another decade. So, my place or yours?"

Sakura fumed, but conceded the logic. "Yours. My parents already worry about my sanity; I don't need you to give them heart attacks."

"Me? Shock the law-abiding citizens of Konoha? Never!" Anko licked her lips and grinned at Sakura's scowl.

"I hate you," Sakura grumbled.

"And I don't care," Anko said. "Let's grab your things and get you settled in."

It took half an hour for Sakura to pack some clothes and other necessities, and another half hour to set up Anko's spare room to her satisfaction, which was less time than she'd expected. Anko's home was surprisingly neat and clean, though the semi-pornographic woodcuts on the walls and the metal tub of empty sake bottles in the kitchen lent a certain disreputable atmosphere. Sakura pulled down the two pictures in her new room and stashed them in the closet, behind the bandage rolls, the weapon chest, and the haphazard collection of men's clothes.

"I can't work with things like that in my face," she told Anko when the special jounin looked speculatively at the brighter rectangles of paint on the walls. "Add that to your baseline profile."

"Well, I can see how they'd disrupt your concentration," Anko said with an air of gracious pity. "Not everyone has my finely honed ability to tune out such appealing distraction."

Sakura gritted her teeth and tamped down the furious shriek echoing in the back of her head. Horny, half-naked strangers were not appealing. (If the pictures were of Sasuke-kun, on the other hand... but no. This wasn't the time for that.) "So. Now what?"

Anko dropped to slouch on the futon and tossed Tomu's diary toward Sakura. "Now you show me how that thing works. I ran some basic diagnostics while you fussed around, and I can't make heads or tails out of the seal -- all I can tell is that it's storing a hell of a lot of chakra somewhere in there. I want to watch it in operation and get my own sense of this Tomu character before you tell me your impressions."

Sakura moved toward Anko's desk, running her fingers over the book to check for damage. She hoped Anko hadn't hurt Tomu... and come to think of it, when had Anko gotten her hands on the diary? Sakura hadn't given it to her.

"Anko-san, how did--"

"You need better security on your pack," Anko said before Sakura could finish her question. "It's usually redundant within Konoha, but it's safer to make traps and telltales a habit."

Sakura gritted her teeth again. "Right. I'm going to spend fifteen minutes talking with Tomu. Please don't jostle me while I'm writing." She inked her brush and opened the diary, trying to ignore Anko's hovering presence at her shoulder.


	6. Too Many Cooks

_"Hello, Tomu,"_ Sakura wrote. _"I hope you haven't been bored or lonely. I would have written sooner, but I had lessons."_

Tomu's angular script welled up through the page as her own words sank. _\--Don't worry, Hana. I understand that you're busy and have other friends. After so many years of only my own company, I'm grateful for any time you can spare.--_

_"Still, I feel bad for you. You can't talk with other people, read books, or take walks when I leave you."_ Sakura nibbled the end of her brush, trying to put her thoughts in order. Anko's presence itched as if she had a target painted between her shoulder blades. _"Tomu, I wanted to ask you something. We agreed that you're probably from a different world, but you speak my language. That seems unlikely; are you using magic to translate?"_

_\--Yes. Would you like me to explain the jutsu?--_

He didn't pause before answering. That was interesting -- even if Tomu were being completely honest and had no ulterior motives, it would be natural to hesitate over revealing information. Did his lack of hesitation mean he was acting? Or did writing slow their conversation just enough to let him anticipate the ends of her sentences and make his choices before she lifted her brush?

_"I'm not sure I'll understand your explanation," _Sakura wrote, _"but yes, please do. I always like learning new things!"___

___\--Your teacher must appreciate that, Hana. In any case, the jutsu is based on a maguru machine that puts together large amounts of information and finds relationships among the entries faster than humans can spot them. My jutsu collects examples of whatever language is used around the diary and finds a framework of words and grammatical rules. It's very slow, so for us to understand each other as well as we do, my diary must have been in your world a long time.--_ _ _

___"What does maguru mean, Tomu?"_ Sakura wrote. Then she looked over her shoulder at Anko. "The diary fell from non-space straight into Tsunade-shishou's hands. I'm the first person to write in here since then, so how could he learn kanji and katakana?"_ _

__"Proximity absorption," Anko said after a moment. "And a code-breaking jutsu. Shit. Who knows what he's learned from Tsunade's papers?"_ _

___\--In my world, maguru is what we call people who can't use magic,--_ Tomu wrote._ _

__His phrasing dragged Sakura's attention away from Anko. _"There are people who can't learn magic? That's strange! Everyone can learn to use chakra; it's just that most people don't bother, since it's tricky and it's best to start young. Many priests and mystics are healers or experts on seals."__ _

__Anko poked her shoulder with a sharp fingernail. "Where did Godaime-sama keep the book?"_ _

__"With her collection of epic samurai romances, above the illustrated herbals, so I doubt he learned anything classified," Sakura said. "His translation is too smooth to be a type of code-breaking, though. We already know he uses genjutsu. Maybe he can pull words out of my mind when I'm writing?"_ _

__"If he can, we're fucked beyond recovery," Anko said, "so we'll assume he can't. Most mind-walkers can't get more than surface impressions, but stop thinking about me, just in case."_ _

___\--What do your priests seal away?--_ Tomu wrote._ _

___"Monsters and demons, of course,"_ Sakura answered, trying to keep her paranoia under control. She wasn't Haruno Sakura. She was Hana, a flighty, bubbly girl just a bit too trusting and naïve -- the way she might have been as a civilian, without Sasuke and Naruto. Hana had no reason to suspect Tomu. _"Don't you have animals that use chakra -- or magic -- in your world?"__ _

___\--Yes, but we haven't made a habit of imprisoning them.--_ This time, Tomu paused. _\--Hana, are you sure everyone in your world can learn to use chakra?--__ _

__Why did that interest him so much? Sakura settled on a half-truth. _"Chakra is the combination of physical and spiritual energy. If you don't have both types of energy, you die, so of course everyone has chakra."_ On the other hand, Rock Lee was living proof that having chakra wasn't exactly the same as being able to use chakra, but it was probably best to give Tomu an exaggerated idea of Konoha's strength, just in case._ _

__Anko was starting to fidget behind her, and Sakura was too tired to keep splitting her attention. _"I'm sorry, Tomu, but my mother is calling. I have to go. I'll write again tomorrow."__ _

__Sakura shut the diary and turned to face Anko. "That's Tomu. Now what?"_ _


	7. Time Flies

"Now you get to be patient," Anko said. "Forget what you know about fights -- intelligence ops take time."

So Sakura was patient, and cautious, and, one week later, slowly boiling over with frustration. She had learned all sorts of trivial things, and nothing to let her say definitively whether Tomu was an enemy, a victim of a particularly nasty trap, or both.

Tomu told her about growing up as an orphan and knowing something about him was 'wrong' -- and how learning magic had been like opening a door and realizing he'd spent his life in a one-room prison when he could have been exploring a whole world. Sakura told him about her parents, and how they didn't quite understand that being a ninja was her life, not just her job, but how they did their best to support her anyway.

Tomu explained that wizards in his world hid themselves from people without magic, because they were outnumbered and afraid. Sakura didn't think that was the whole story. Really, if ninja ever wanted to, they could easily overthrow the daimyo and rule directly; the proper application of fear and rewards would go a long way toward keeping civilians content, and if the civilians weren't united, their numerical advantages became meaningless. But she held her hand and told Tomu a little bit about the system of kage and councils, and the contract laws that kept ninja and civilians working together.

They went on like that, back and forth and never mentioning anything _truly_ important, like how Tomu got into the diary, how the diary got to Sakura's world, or how either of those conditions could be reversed. She wasn't even sure Tomu wanted to go home. _\--Your world sounds much less willfully blind than mine,--_ he wrote once, with a wistful air. Sakura couldn't tell whether to take that as a threat or as a sign that he might be an ally after all.

"I think I'm going crazy," she told Tsunade during her morning lesson, hands braced on her thighs while she gathered her breath.

"Everyone goes insane sooner or later," Tsunade said without sympathy. "If you're not strong enough to cope with that, you can always quit. I hear civilian life is much less stressful."

Sakura gritted her teeth and punched the cliff wall with renewed force. Gravel sprayed from the impact, leaving a several meter wide crater. "I'm not weak!"

"Maybe," Tsunade said. "Two more strikes with your right, then switch to your left."

Sakura imagined that the stones wore Orochimaru's and Itachi's faces. It helped her focus.

That evening, Tomu mentioned that he could speak with snakes; it was an inborn gift, like a bloodline limit. Sakura had to set her brush aside and sit on her hands for several minutes to keep herself from telling him about Sasuke.

"Good girl," Anko said after Sakura closed the diary. "They say Anbu's a mind trip -- and it is, especially if you go in wanting to protect people -- but intelligence work is just as twisty. It's a little like acting, a little like doing genjutsu on the inside of your own head, and a little like going crazy on command. You have to tuck yourself away deep inside and show people what you need them to see. You have to _be_ what you need them to see... without losing yourself along the way."

"How do you keep it all straight?" Sakura's voice was more plaintive than she liked, too much like the whiny little brat she wanted to put behind her, but Anko didn't take the chance to mock her.

"Fuck me if I know how anyone keeps anything straight normally -- life doesn't sort out tidy like laundry or groceries, you know. But I take your point." Anko dropped her eyes to examine her fingernails, scraping at the chipped green polish. "One thing that helps is having a person or a place to come back to. You go there, and you train or talk or meditate, and you remind yourself which parts of your head are you and which are just camouflage."

She shrugged. "I use a place. I think it takes longer, but the only people I trust that far aren't people I'd dump that shit onto. It's a hell of a job to lay on a person, watching you turn yourself inside out."

Sakura considered the implications. "Um. But if you trust someone that far, and they want to help you, shouldn't you trust them to know their own limits?"

Anko's smile was humorless. "Probably. But I've never been good at teamwork." She strode out of the room, leaving Sakura alone with the diary.

Sakura stared after her, wondering, and then turned back to her desk as if drawn by a magnet. She wasn't getting anywhere with Tomu on her own, and while Anko's presence kept her honest, they weren't really working _together_ , just alongside each other. She was running in circles. She needed Naruto to come up with a brilliantly stupid idea that cut through her preconceptions, or Sasuke to explain exactly where she was missing an obvious mistake, or Kakashi to smile and obfuscate and drive her absolutely crazy until the pieces of the puzzle suddenly rearranged themselves and made sense.

She didn't have Naruto or Sasuke. Kakashi, though...

Slowly, Sakura smiled.


	8. If at First You Don't Succeed

The trouble with talking to Kakashi was finding Kakashi. When he wasn't tied, however loosely, to the obligations of a jounin-sensei, the man was practically a ghost.

Sakura spent two fruitless days chasing him around town. "Oh, I saw him just a minute ago right over there," people said, but whenever she reached 'there,' Kakashi had already left. If she didn't know better, she'd swear he was avoiding her on purpose. But that made no sense, right?

Anko found the situation hilarious. "You have no idea, do you?" she said the second evening as she cooked a chicken and vegetable stir-fry. "He spent more time with you than with anyone other than his old teammates, and you don't have a clue how to read him."

"So now _you're_ an expert in reading him?" Sakura said sourly. The constant restrictions forced on her by Anko's presence were driving her crazy; she wondered if this trapped feeling was anything like being shut in a book.

Anko shrugged and divided the stir-fry onto two plates. "No, but I know something about his history and I didn't let our shared allegiance stop me from fitting together the pieces he lets slip. Work it out for yourself." She scooped rice from a pot and molded it into neat spheres, and then set a bottle of soy sauce on the table. "But eat first; it's hard to think when your body's nagging at you."

Sakura ate, and then went to talk with Tomu. _"My Aunt Inpon came to visit a few days ago,"_ she wrote. _"She's a lot younger than my mother, and she likes to pretend she's still my age, so she wants to hang out with me all the time. She's driving me crazy!"_

Behind her, Anko laughed.

_\--It can certainly be irritating to have constant company when you'd rather be alone,--_ Tomu agreed. _\--On the other hand, your aunt clearly likes you and might be willing to do you a few favors. Perhaps she could give you permission to do things your parents normally don't allow.--_

"Manipulative little sneak, isn't he," Anko said. "So are you. All right -- give me the diary tomorrow morning, and I'll switch to distance surveillance for the afternoon."

Sakura bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a sigh of relief. _"Thank you, Tomu -- I think that might help. But enough of my problems. Last night you said you'd tell me about dragons..."_

Later that night, Sakura thought about Kakashi. What did she know about her former jounin-sensei, anyway? He was relatively young, though most jounin reached their rank fairly young. He'd been an Anbu assassin, which didn't speak well for his mental stability, and he certainly _acted_ peculiar. He deflected all personal questions, sometimes so bluntly you couldn't help feeling snubbed. He was obsessed with teamwork, though he had almost no social skills himself. He had a Sharingan eye...

Oh.

Sakura felt like slapping herself. To get a Sharingan eye, he had to know an Uchiha -- he had to know an Uchiha _really well_ \-- and since Kakashi didn't have friends, that probably meant they'd been teammates. All his old teammates were dead, he hadn't been able to save them, and he had a reminder stuck in his _face_. No wonder Kakashi had been all kinds of awkward dealing with Team 7. No wonder he'd favored Sasuke.

No wonder he was avoiding her now.

The next day, after her training session, Sakura hovered uncertainly in Tsunade's doorway. "Tsunade-shishou? I have a request for my mission."

"So ask -- don't just stand there like a kicked puppy," Tsunade said as she grabbed a bottle of sake from her desk.

"Um. I'm not getting anywhere, and I think I'm missing something obvious. I need someone to talk to, to think of crazy ideas and turn the problem upside down until I see what I'm overlooking. So I wondered if you'd assign Kakashi--"

Tsunade choked on a mouthful of sake.

"I'm sorry! Are you all right?" Sakura asked, dashing forward.

Tsunade waved her off. "I'm fine, I'm fine -- I just swallowed the wrong way. Let me get this straight. You want Hatake Kakashi to help you solve a problem?"

"Yes," Sakura said, wondering why that was funny. "I was going to run it by him in hypotheticals, but I think he's avoiding me. If you make it a mission, I can tell him the truth and he won't be able to weasel out. Kakashi-sensei drives me crazy, but he's brilliant and I'm used to looking stupid in front of him, so he'll be more useful than Anko."

Slowly, with an edge of schadenfreude, Tsunade smiled. "Sure. It'll do him good to face some of his obligations. Do you want me to give him the details in advance, or would you rather spring them on him yourself? Even behind the mask, his expression should be priceless."

"Whatever you think is best," Sakura said.

"No problem. He'll be here tomorrow after your lesson," Tsunade said, leaning back in her chair. "And speaking of lessons, make sure you get enough sleep tonight. Your reactions were slow this morning, and while there are stimulants and jutsu that will shunt tiredness aside for a while, it's best to avoid crutches."

"Yes, Tsunade-shishou," Sakura agreed, and slipped away as Shizune walked in with a stack of paperwork.

That was odd, she thought as she sat on a roof railing and enjoyed the sunshine, the mild summer breeze, and the lack of Anko hanging over her shoulder. She hadn't been losing sleep. So why did Tsunade think she seemed tired?

Could it be Tomu's fault? They still didn't know how the seal on the diary worked -- if Tomu could work genjutsu on the outside world, maybe he could also try to weaken people?

No, Sakura decided, that was too far-fetched. Tomu wanted to get out of his trap; disabling his only contact with the outside world wouldn't help him reach that goal. She was just distracted. She'd been spending too much time worrying about Tomu and Anko, and not enough keeping up with the rest of her life.

She had a free afternoon. She decided to drop in on Ino.


	9. Idle Hands

Sakura and Ino had long since set aside their enmity, but there was no point losing a good rivalry just because they were friends again.

Sakura did her best to sneak stealthily through the trees surrounding Team 10's favorite practice area. Shikamaru spotted her within ten seconds, of course -- he was a lot more observant and paranoid than he liked to let on -- but he didn't give her away. Either he figured it was too much bother, or he liked watching Ino get ambushed.

Sakura crept up a tree, inched out along an overhanging branch, and hurled herself forward in a flying kick. "Ino-pig!"

"Forehead-girl!"

Damn, she'd dodged. Ino was definitely getting faster. As Sakura feinted a left punch, she wondered if Tsunade knew a way to concentrate chakra non-explosively and use it to enhance a quick-step jutsu. It should be possible, albeit tricky, and she'd heard rumors of a flash-step jutsu used by some jounin in the wars the Fourth Hokage had ended.

Sakura and Ino circled each other warily for another minute, and then Ino threw up her hands. "Screw this. I trained all morning and I'm too tired to spar. Let's call it a draw and you come have lunch with us."

Sakura looked to Shikamaru and Choji for confirmation; Shikamaru shrugged, and Choji smiled bashfully. "My mother's barbecuing today," he said, opening a bag of potato chips. "Another guest is no trouble."

"Thanks!" Sakura said. "Now?"

"Yeah," said Ino, and they each grabbed one of Shikamaru's hands and hauled him to his feet.

After lunch, they wandered over to the Yamanaka flower shop. Ino badgered Choji into helping her carry some potted shrubbery from the greenhouse to a delivery cart, while Shikamaru and Sakura poured fresh water into the vases of cut flowers. Sakura wasn't quite sure how she'd ended up with a watering pot in her hands, but things like that happened around Ino if she didn't pay close attention. Ino was _good_ at bowling people over.

"How's your mission going?" Shikamaru asked.

Sakura whirled, spilling a trail of water over the floor before she straightened the pot. "What mission?" she asked, and then cursed herself for reacting. Anko was right; she'd been letting her guard down in Konoha. Sooner or later that was going to land her in trouble.

Shikamaru sighed. "It's obvious you have a mission. You're twitchy and tired, you haven't tried ambushing Ino for nearly two weeks now, I haven't seen you anywhere else around town, and your parents wouldn't tell us where you were when Ino dragged us over to your house. I figure it's intelligence work, either internal spying or data analysis for an ongoing or failed mission. So do you need help, and how soon will you be finished? Ino doesn't like losing your attention and it's tiresome dealing with her in a snit."

Sakura grimaced and set the watering pot down on a handy counter. Shikamaru had her neatly targeted; there was no point spinning a cover story that he wouldn't believe. She'd just omit all the details. "Yes, I have a mission, it's classified so I can't ask you for help, and I don't know when I'll be finished. Have you mentioned any of this to Ino or Choji?"

"Do I look suicidal?" Shikamaru said as he leaned against the counter and folded his arms. "You said you can't ask _me_ for help, so... who _are_ you asking, or is that classified too?"

"You're too smart for your own good," Sakura grumbled.

"Classified," Shikamaru concluded, and shrugged. "Intelligence missions suck, but at least you get to stay in Konoha for yours, instead of running all over the continent trying to find things that may not even exist."

"That would be easier," Sakura said as she picked up the watering pot and turned back to Ino's flower arrangements.

Shikamaru made a noncommittal noise. "Interesting. You have bags under your eyes and your hands aren't steady enough with the watering pot... and the only thing I've seen you lose sleep over is Uchiha Sasuke. Are you dealing with another traitor?"

Sakura slammed the watering pot down again. "I do not have bags under my eyes! I'm not losing sleep. And I'm not talking about this with you anymore, because it's classified and it's none of your business anyway."

Tomu was her responsibility. She _would_ figure him out. She wasn't weak, she wasn't stupid, and she was _not_ going to fail this mission. She was going to prove herself to everyone. Maybe she couldn't talk to Tomu right now, but there was no way on earth she was going to waste time listening to anyone insult her loyalty to Sasuke.

"Tell Ino I had to go home," Sakura said, and went to find something to break.


	10. Can't See the Forest

"You have a weird idea of relaxation," Anko said as she opened her apartment window and let Sakura in. "There's no point sending me away if you're just going to break rocks all afternoon, especially since you already break rocks all morning with the old lady."

"Shut up," Sakura said.

"I can see that the shopping district might not be your style, but there's always the hot springs, or even the library," Anko continued, tossing her vest onto the couch and stretching her arms up toward the ceiling; her mesh shirt rode up, leaving her stomach bare, and doing nothing to hide her purple sports bra.

"I said shut up," Sakura snapped, stomping into the kitchen and yanking open several cupboards. "I'll cook tonight. Do you want beef or tofu in the stir-fry?"

"Meat. There's no point if it didn't die bloody and screaming." Anko licked her lips and grinned when Sakura slammed the frozen steak on the cutting board. "Hey, do you know the quick-thaw jutsu, for getting drinking water from snow? It's great for lazy cooks."

Sakura glared at the beef and ran through four hand seals. "I figured that out last year -- I'm not stupid," she said as she released chakra into the pattern. A puddle of blood-tinged water spread from under the rapidly warming meat, and she scowled. She'd overdone that by at least ten degrees; her control was wavering. Most ninja wouldn't notice, but then, most ninja didn't _have_ control fine enough to tune a heat jutsu to any intervals smaller than 'freezing,' 'lukewarm,' 'on fire,' and 'hot enough to melt steel.'

"I never said you weren't smart," Anko said, moving past her to pull two bowls from a cupboard. "But you don't have the experience to focus your mind, so you flail around a lot. Worrying wastes energy, and pretty soon you're going to worry yourself into a panic and stop thinking. You need to take a deep breath and let it all go."

Sakura chopped the beef into small cubes, and then pulled a cabbage from the refrigerator. "I was _trying_ to do that. But--"

"But you lost your temper at the Nara boy," Anko finished. "I get that. I worked a mission with him last winter, and he's a fucking pain in the ass. But when you're wound up this tight, you don't go wind yourself even tighter."

Sakura turned to glare at Anko. "Fine. Hitting things only makes me angrier, unless I'm hitting the person who's causing my problems. But I can't hit Tomu -- that would break cover and I can't touch him anyway -- I can't hit you, and I really can't hit Tsunade, and it's been two weeks and I'm not getting anywhere, and _what do you want me to do, damn it?_ "

Anko leaned back against the doorframe and crossed her arms. "Good question. I'm glad you asked -- it means you're finally ready to work together instead of just tolerating me. And to start with, I want you to put down the knife."

Sheepishly, Sakura lowered the butcher knife.

Anko's mouth twitched, as if she wanted to smile but was trying to be magnanimous. "Thanks -- it's damn rude to point weapons at your host, especially when I'm being nice and telling you stuff I had to learn the hard way. Now listen: our mission is to figure out Hanjimono Tomu's story. You're acting like this is an exam, but it's not -- there's no time limit, no cheat sheet -- so stop thinking we need to find a big secret fast. This might take years. That's fine. We might never be sure where he came from or what his motives are. That's fine too. We can always burn the damn book -- better safe than sorry, and casualties happen."

"But if he's innocent--"

"He could be a fucking saint and it wouldn't matter," Anko said flatly. "Yeah, maybe he didn't kill anyone to make that seal, and maybe he isn't an enemy, but if I had to balance one person against all of Konoha? I'd pick Konoha in a heartbeat. If you wouldn't make the same choice, you have no business being a ninja."

She let that hang in the air for a moment, and then shrugged. "That's the main point, see? Everything else is details, and you shouldn't get hung up on them. Now hurry up and start the rice -- I'm going to take a shower."

As Anko left the kitchen, Sakura banged open a cupboard and thumped the rice sack onto the counter. Maybe Anko was right that she was looking at this mission the wrong way, but the rest of what she'd said... that was wrong. Yes, casualties happened, but that was no excuse to shrug and stop trying to reduce them. Yes, defending Konoha was important, but not if people turned themselves into monsters in the process. Konoha was a group of precious people as much as a place, and if she had to choose between betraying a friend or betraying the village... well, maybe she _would_ choose Konoha, but not so coldly, not like Anko made it sound!

A familiar, unwelcome thought flashed through her mind: what if Naruto's seal ever broke? What if Sasuke stayed with Orochimaru and attacked Konoha?

"Then I'd break their legs and hit them until they came back to their senses," Sakura muttered to herself, and slammed a pepper down on the cutting board. "I wouldn't just give up."

There was always a way around impossible choices. Naruto had shown her that.

Tomorrow she'd figure out how to prove Tomu's intentions, one way or the other.


	11. Never Put off for Tomorrow

Sakura sat in an out-of-the-way meeting room in the Hokage's Tower, trying not to fidget. Tomu's diary lay on the table in front of her, along with a set of calligraphy supplies, and she wanted very badly to complain to him about Kakashi's tardiness and her mixed feelings about talking to her former jounin-sensei for the first time since Team 7 was officially dissolved.

"Kai," she muttered, and looked out the window instead. Beside her, Anko sharpened a kunai and whistled, off-key.

In the back of Sakura's head, a litany of curses and insults looped over into its twelfth repetition.

"--overlooking this behavior, no matter how well you execute missions," Tsunade's voice drifted in from the hallway. "Timing can be critical, and you don't make that call. If it's not a time-critical mission, you can screw off all you want _after_ you get your orders and briefing, but when I tell you to be in my office at noon, you'll damn well knock on my door at noon. Clear?"

"Absolutely see-through," Kakashi drawled.

"Good, because next time I'll dock your pay a whole grade for every ten minutes you make me wait," Tsunade said. "I called you here today to join an ongoing intelligence mission. Your new partners will give you the details."

The door swung open. Sakura smiled at her two teachers.

Kakashi blinked and missed his first grab for the knob. His face smoothed immediately back to bland boredom with a hint of condescending amusement... but for just a second, he'd been completely wrong-footed. Sakura had _seen_ it.

Tsunade sent a conspiratorial wink across the room and said, briskly, "This mission is currently assigned to Haruno Sakura, chuunin, and Mitarashi Anko, special jounin. Sakura is the primary contact with the target; Anko is her guard and watchdog. Your job is to provide a fresh perspective. You three have the use of this room until sunset, and I'm available if you need me."

She shoved Kakashi into the room and shut the door behind him.

After a moment, Kakashi tilted his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "I admit this is a surprise. I never pictured you for intelligence work, Sakura-chan -- you're smart enough, but you were never very good at keeping secrets. What mess did you get yourself into this time?"

Sakura slammed her hand down on the table and drew a breath to scream... and then closed her mouth. That was what Kakashi wanted her to do. He wanted her to act like the shallow girl he remembered, so he wouldn't have to take her or this mission seriously. Well, she wasn't going to play along. She'd save up all the annoyances and insults and get back at him later.

She pushed the diary across the table toward Kakashi. "Several years ago, when Tsunade-sama summoned one of her slugs, this book fell through in the backwash," she said, keeping her voice even. "It holds the memory imprint of a young man named Hanjimono Tomu, who communicates through writing. I suspect a life-powered seal was used to create the imprint, especially because Tomu is able to learn. There's a genjutsu on the diary that makes me want to trust him. Also, when Tsunade-sama first found the book, Tomu's name was written in a foreign language, but by the time I found him, he'd learned our language and could write in kanji, katakana, and hiragana."

Kakashi flipped idly through the diary. "Interesting. So you're trying to determine if the imprint is a threat, and to discover the mechanism behind the seals and the genjutsu. Any luck?"

"Would I be talking to you if we were getting anywhere?" Sakura demanded.

Kakashi gave her a disappointed look. Anko snickered.

Sakura stared down at her hands, embarrassed. Be professional, she reminded herself. Don't react. "We think the diary came from a different dimension. Tomu's template could manipulate a natural force similar to chakra; he translates it as 'magic.' He's fishing for information and influence -- he flatters my cover persona and pushes her to follow his advice on minor civilian problems -- but I can't tell if that's a defense or a real danger. He's too evasive. I don't want to kill Tomu unless we prove he's a threat, but I'm pretty sure the _book_ is dangerous."

"Very interesting," Kakashi said, still studying blank pages. "Anko? Anything to add?"

Anko tested her kunai on the ball of her thumb. "One thing. The genjutsu might have a second component -- Sakura's been getting tired and she's been avoiding her friends. It might only be stress and no experience dealing with classified intel... but maybe the diary's trying to isolate her as well as befriend her."

"That makes no sense!" Sakura protested. She wasn't avoiding people, and she wasn't tired -- and even if she were, there was no way Tomu could affect her _physically_ from within the diary. "Why would Tomu want to isolate his only contact with the world?"

Kakashi and Anko exchanged an 'ah, the innocence of children' look over her head.

"The only certain way to release a life-powered seal is to use another life," Kakashi said, all humor gone from his voice. "If you fell completely under this imprint's control -- if you believed whatever he said and nobody was around to challenge him..."

"Then what? I wouldn't betray Konoha, no matter what anyone said!"

"You're missing the point. People do fucking crazy things after enough isolation and sleep deprivation, especially if they trust the person giving the orders," Anko said. She drew her kunai across her throat, a hair's breadth from breaking her skin, and bared her teeth in something that might have been a smile. "I've been there. I know. And cleaning up a ritual sealing site -- making it look like suicide or an accident--"

"--is the easiest thing in the world," Kakashi concluded. The diary snapped shut.


	12. Even a Stopped Clock

Sakura stared blankly at Kakashi. "You think Tomu wants to brainwash me into committing suicide by unsealing him?"

"I think it's a possibility," Kakashi said, tossing the diary back across the table. Sakura caught it reflexively, then dropped the book as if it had burned her fingers. "The imprint might also be an innocent victim caught in a particularly nasty trap. I have no firsthand experience to point one way or another."

" _You've_ watched us talk," Sakura said, turning to Anko. "What do you think?"

Anko twirled her kunai around her little finger and frowned. "Hard to say. He comes off shifty, but anyone would get paranoid after decades stuck in a book, and just being shifty doesn't make someone an enemy. He also comes off arrogant... but like I said, being a jerk isn't a crime. Yet." She jabbed the knife into the table. "It's a fucking pain trying to read this Tomu guy with no vocal inflections or body language to help out."

"But he does have inflections. Sometimes he smiles when--" Sakura said, and then stopped. "Wait. That could be important. Why didn't I think to tell anyone about that?"

Kakashi and Anko exchanged a grimmer look.

"I think I'd better watch while you write in this book," Kakashi said, walking around the table to stand at Sakura's shoulder. "Anko, call Tsunade-sama. I'd like her to run a medical diagnostic while Sakura's using the diary; I'll check for genjutsu and ninjutsu at the same time." He pushed up his forehead protector, exposing the whirling black-and-red of his Sharingan.

Sakura's stomach sank. She'd thought she was doing a good job, considering her lack of experience, but if she hadn't remembered to report something as obvious as body language attached to a featureless book -- especially when she _knew_ the genjutsu was trying to prejudice her in favor of Tomu -- maybe Kakashi had been right. Maybe she was in over her head. Maybe she should resign from the mission and turn it over to--

"Stop fidgeting," Kakashi said, slouching against the wall by her right shoulder. "You'll do fine. You've made it through two weeks; another few minutes won't break you."

Tsunade and Anko walked in before Sakura could frame any sort of response.

"Would you prefer a contact or distance scan?" Tsunade asked, striding around the table to Sakura's other side. Anko busied herself plastering seals to the door and window.

"Contact. It restricts the wave resonance," Kakashi said. "Ready?"

Tsunade laid a cool hand on the back of Sakura's neck, and a low thrumming tingle spread phantom fingers through her body. After a few seconds it faded from her immediate awareness. "Yes. Sakura?" Tsunade asked.

"Yes." Sakura opened the diary and inked her brush; one drop fell onto the open pages, spread in a ragged circle, and was swallowed by white. _"Hello, Tomu. I'm sorry I'm late -- Kakashi-sensei, one of my old teachers, came to sit in on my morning lesson. He's never on time, so we ran past noon."_

It was petty, but she couldn't resist the dig.

_\--I don't mind, Hana; I'm glad for any time you can spare me. Did Kakashi-san contribute anything interesting to make up for inconveniencing you?--_ Tomu's answer welled up like blood, glistened briefly, and subsided.

_"I'm not sure. He talks in circles, so it'll take me a while to figure out what he meant,"_ Sakura fudged. _"He claims it's good training in creative problem-solving, but I think he just enjoys irritating people."_

_\--I had a teacher like that, back home,--_ Tomu said. _\--Danburudoa-sensei taught transfiguration, which is the art of changing one object into another, and I think it made him incapable of taking anything at face value. He loved secrets. I wouldn't have minded so much if he hadn't always smiled like he was secretly mocking me.--_ A sense of frustration rose briefly from the pages, and was smothered in careful neutrality. ¬ _\--On the other hand, it was very satisfying to decipher his more obscure remarks.--_

Sakura smiled despite herself. _"I'm glad your teacher and mine won't ever meet. They'd probably become best friends and drive everyone in both worlds completely crazy."_ Even if this Danburudoa wasn't a pervert, he obviously had Kakashi's streak of cheerful sadism, and one enigmatic jerk was more than enough for any town.

She re-inked her brush and tried a tangent. _"It was good to see Kakashi-sensei, even though he's a jerk. I know my other teammates are learning a lot from their new teachers, but I miss them, and Kakashi-sensei reminds me of them."_

_\--They were your friends, not just teammates?--_ Tomu asked.

_"More or less. We argued--"_ Sakura started.

Tsunade drew a sharp breath; her fingers flexed against Sakura's skin. "Break off. Now."

_"--a lot, but we worked well together. Tomu, my mother just knocked on my door. I have to go."_

_\--Until later, Hana.--_

Tomu's words faded into the diary. Sakura closed the book, set her brush down on the ink dish, and looked up at Tsunade, frowning. "That's the first time he's mentioned any person by name. It might have been a sign of trust. Why did you stop me?"

Tsunade shook her fingers out as if they were numb. "Because the book is killing you."


	13. Don't Judge a Book

"Killing me?" Sakura repeated blankly.

"It's subtle, and I can't work out the mechanism, but the seal is draining your chakra," Tsunade said. "That's probably why you've seemed tired recently."

"It would also explain why the genjutsu is so strong," Kakashi added, lowering his forehead protector over his left eye. "The chakra flow splits once it hits the book. One strand doubles back to you, which suggests that the imprint is using your own energy to hypnotize you. I say we destroy the book and triple-classify the mission records."

"But we haven't proved anything about Tomu!" Sakura protested. "We've only proved that the _diary_ is evil, and we already knew that."

Tsunade crossed her arms and frowned. "At this point, I don't care if this Hanjimono Tomu is innocent; he's more trouble than he's worth. On the other hand, I'd really like to know exactly how that book ended up in non-space, and whether we're likely to run into other nasty surprises from other worlds. The more we learn, the better prepared we'll be in the future."

Kakashi coughed. "There's one slight problem. We can't learn anything from the imprint without writing in the book, and that's potentially deadly. It's also stupid, since we don't know what other jutsu the imprint might be able to perform once it gathers enough chakra. Imagine mind-control genjutsu on a village-wide scale, for example. This is an unnecessary risk."

Sakura stared down at the diary, wondering if Kakashi might be right. Tomu's world did use genjutsu on a grand scale -- illusions strong enough to erase the memories of millions of people. Could he use those jutsu here? _Would_ he?

Anko's harsh laugh broke the tension. "Dumbass!"

Kakashi tilted his head. "How so?"

"Genjutsu!" Anko said, straightening from her slouch against the window frame. "We don't need to open the book and activate the drain. He's already opened a mental connection to Sakura -- let's reverse it and read _his_ mind!" She slapped the table for emphasis.

Sakura looked hopefully at Kakashi. "Can we do that?"

Kakashi's visible brow drew down in irritation. "No. Genjutsu doesn't work like that. You can influence, but you can't see beneath the surface layers of--" he began.

"Stop trying to fast-talk her," Tsunade said. "We know this Tomu has unusual talents, and he picked up our language suspiciously fast and fluently. His connection to Sakura may be closer to Yamanaka mind-walking than ordinary genjutsu, which means this could work. The question is whether we can get her in without tipping him off. You're the expert -- can you manage the insertion?"

Kakashi ignored her. "Are you _sure_ you want to risk this?" he asked Sakura. "You don't owe the imprint any loyalty."

"It's wrong to kill anyone without proof," Sakura said, pressing one hand protectively over the diary. "If Tomu is evil, that's one thing, but I'm learning to be a medic-nin. I'm supposed to help people, not abandon them."

Tsunade twitched, and then smiled, wry and rueful with just a hint of pride. "You heard my apprentice. Get on with it, Hatake."

"If we do this, I'll take you into an illusion," Kakashi said, pulling out a chair and sitting next to Sakura. "Your conscious mind isn't aware of your connection to the imprint, but I can find the main thread in your subconscious mind and point it out to you. I can't touch the connection without alerting the imprint, so once you grasp the thread, you'll be on your own."

He raised his forehead-protector. "You threw off Yamanaka Ino's mind trap in your first chuunin exam, which means you have some mental strength. Hoard that; it's harder to escape an enemy's mind than to enter. Also, it will help if you're touching the book. Ready?"

Sakura bit her lip. She really didn't remember much of that fight against Ino, and she knew her willpower would never be as strong as, say, Naruto or Sasuke. She was always the weakest link. But she wasn't going to stop trying to improve. She wouldn't slow them down again.

This was her mission. Tomu was her responsibility. She had to know the truth, one way or the other.

"You can back out any time, Sakura," Kakashi said, almost gently.

Sakura's head snapped up and she gripped the diary in white-knuckled hands. "No! I'm not going to give up, never again. Do it now!"

She met the whirling red-and-black of Kakashi's left eye, and fell into darkness.


	14. Put Your Money

Sakura opened her eyes to blackness.

Kakashi slouched in front of her, an oddly thoughtful expression on his face. Then he blinked and reverted to his habitual sleepy-eyed and slightly mocking smile. "Yo. Welcome to your subconscious mind... or at least the part you're willing to show to strangers. From the complete lack of décor, I take it you don't trust me much."

Sakura shrugged; that wasn't _exactly_ true, but it was close enough and this wasn't the time for that discussion. "Now what?"

"We look for the thing that doesn't belong," Kakashi said. "And since there's absolutely nothing else here, I'd say we want that door to your left."

Sakura turned, and then blinked. A tall, solid door -- made of oak fastened with iron bands -- stood, with no walls or frame, in the middle of nothing. The darkness flinched from its edges, giving it the impression of a sickly halo. A rusty key stuck out of a massive lock, and an iron ring hung beneath the lock-plate, presumably to serve as a doorknob.

As Sakura walked closer, she noticed three unfamiliar words carved in the wood; beneath them, in a sloppy version of her own writing, were the kanji for Tomu's name.

"Riddles and riches. At least the family name is accurate," Kakashi said, slouching beside her. "I still think this is an unnecessary risk. We don't _need_ anything you can pry from the imprint."

"Maybe you don't, but I need to know if he's a victim or a spy," Sakura said. Pushing down her unease, she turned the key.

The door swung soundlessly away from her, revealing a dusty, high-ceilinged stone corridor. Paintings in an unfamiliar style hung on the walls; in the distance, a shaft of sunlight fell through an unseen window. Nothing moved; no sounds stirred the air. There was no sign of Tomu, no sign of an ambush.

Sakura hesitated, uneasy. "What if the door closes while I'm gone?"

"It has to open from the other side as well," Kakashi said. "That's how the imprint reaches you. But if you're worried, I can wait here." His face looked strangely naked with both eyes exposed, even though everything from his nose down was still covered.

Sakura had always thought Kakashi was nearly useless as a teacher or a team leader. Aside from the brief tree-climbing lesson in Wave Country, Team 7 had had to teach and train themselves, because Kakashi couldn't be bothered. Looking back, though... maybe that had been the point. Maybe he'd been trying to make them learn to trust and rely on each other. She thought he'd picked a stupid method -- and she was still furious about the way he'd ignored her during the month before Orochimaru's invasion -- but he'd _meant_ well. Probably.

He probably meant well now, too, even if he was still going about it all backwards.

"Thank you," Sakura said. "We'll all be safer if you keep an eye on the door. That way, if Tomu realizes what I'm doing -- if he tries to start the drain, or take control of my body -- you'll be ready to stop him. Just don't poke around in my head!"

Before she could lose her nerve, she walked through the door.

Dizziness swept over her in a wave, and Sakura placed one hand on the stone wall while she caught her balance. The crisp chill of the air, the scent of dust and books and people, the faint noise of wind and water drifting in through an open window, the distant murmur of human voices that never quite resolved into a person coming within true earshot -- everything screamed that she wasn't in her own mind anymore. She wasn't in her own country. She wasn't in her own _world_.

After a minute, Sakura felt steady enough to turn. Beyond the door, Kakashi seemed like a painting, flat and unreal -- the same way this corridor had looked from within her own mind. His mouth moved, but she couldn't hear anything.

She pointed at her ears, shook her head, and then switched to hand signs. 'Unharmed, mission continues, hold position.'

'Acknowledged,' Kakashi motioned back.

Sakura took a deep breath and crept down the corridor, toward the corner. The next hallway was lined with rows of closed doors, each with a small window just above eye height. Sakura stood on tiptoe and peered through the first door.

The window showed a dark, narrow room filled with flimsy metal beds. Each held a sleeping boy -- except for one, whose occupant had sneaked over to sit by the window and watch patchy clouds drift over the full moon.

Sakura blinked. In the corridor, it was mid-afternoon. In the room, it was night. What on earth?

"Oh, of course," she realized. "It's a memory! That must be Tomu when he was little."

The memory room had the same flat, painted effect that marked the boundary between her mind and Tomu's. She wondered if opening the door would let her talk to the boy. Maybe she could try befriending this younger version of Tomu, back before he'd been trapped and grown wary? On the other hand, an eight-year-old boy probably wouldn't know anything useful, and she didn't want to risk drawing Tomu's attention for no gain. She needed to find a more recent memory, preferably one from right around the diary's creation.

But where would that be? How did Tomu organize his mind? What if the corridors changed while she was exploring, and she couldn't find her way back to her own mind?

Sakura drummed her fingers against the wall and bit her lip, wishing she had someone to tell her what to do.

Then she heard the screams.


	15. Curiosity Killed

Corridors, stairwells, and cavernous rooms flashed by as Sakura ran. First she thought the screamer was a girl, then a man, then several children in ragged chorus, and then back to the single girl. At least five people, being tortured.

_How_ had Tomu ended up in a diary? What had his captors done to him first? Who had they killed to fuel the seal? If he lived with this in his mind, endlessly repeated if he so much as opened the wrong door, no wonder he hadn't talked about his past.

The girl screamed again. Sakura ran faster.

Her feet thumped against the tiles, wind whipped past her face, her blood roared, her heart pounded, her breath hissed through her teeth -- and then she realized the screams had gone silent. Only soft, broken sobs -- the girl, again -- echoed off the walls, oddly directionless.

Stealth and caution, Sakura reminded herself, slowing. Barging straight in might work for Naruto, who had enough stamina and luck to get away with seat-of-his-pants tactics, but her strengths were planning and control. And she couldn't let Tomu know she was spying on him.

No cover. No sense using genjutsu against a master of the art, but she could always... Wait, would genjutsu even work inside the diary, inside Tomu's mind? Did she _have_ chakra to shape?

Sakura rested one hand against the wall, reached inside, and pulled. Yes. The chakra felt odd as she molded it -- maybe it was only her imagination, like this body was only an extension of her mind -- but if everything here came down to thought and determination, she'd do just fine.

She raised her other hand to the wall and began to climb. She didn't need to get fancy. Tomu wasn't a ninja, and civilians almost never thought to look up.

She'd have to apologize to Kakashi once she got back, Sakura thought as she inched along the ceiling and peered around the corner. Chakra-climbing was one of the most useful techniques she'd ever learned.

The new corridor widened into an open, vaulted passageway long enough to hold three doors on each side; then it narrowed again and turned off the the right. A tall, slender boy stood in front of the most distant door on the right, one hand resting on the latch. His hair was dark, his skin was pale, and he wore long black robes in an unfamiliar cut. His left hand gripped a thin wooden rod -- probably the wand he used to control his magic.

Hello, Hanjimono Tomu, how nice to see you at last. Now what was he doing amidst memories of torture? And how long would he stay?

"I've put the others back to sleep," Tomu said, tapping his wand against the glass window in the door. "If you stop fighting, we can stop going through this. For once, be a good girl and listen to me. You know what happens if you don't."

Behind the door, the girl continued to sob.

Tomu flung his hands out in annoyance. "Be that way! Just don't wake the others, or you'll regret it." He turned, leaned against the door, and raked his free hand through his hair -- his posture screamed irritation and exhaustion. Sakura studied him, adding this body to her picture of his personality. His eyes were blue, his mouth thin, his nose oddly narrow. His whole face was cast in a subtly foreign mold -- as exotic in its way as the dark skin of the people across the eastern ocean.

After a minute, Tomu straightened, drew a mask of calm over his face, and strode off down the far corridor. Sakura waited until his footfalls faded into silence, and another minute to be sure. Then she dropped to the floor and headed toward the sobbing girl's door.

Sakura pressed her nose to the glass window, squinting through its distortions and cracks to map the memory room. Porcelain sinks lined one wall, across from a row of cubicle stalls with flimsy bolts on their doors -- the furthest one was shut and locked, probably hiding the crying girl. Two tall, dingy windows took up the center of the far wall, and a handful of wall sconces shed light and soot in roughly equal amounts. A shallow puddle glistened under the nearest sink.

A bathroom, the utilitarian sort found in a barracks, an office building, or a school. No urinals, so it was a women's bathroom -- why was it important to Tomu? Who was the crying girl?

Sakura checked over her shoulder, confirming Tomu's absence, and knocked on the door. "Hello? Can you understand me?"

The girl continued to sob, giving no acknowledgement.

Sakura knocked again, pressing her ear to the door, straining to hear any change within the room. "Hello? I'm Hana -- who are you? Do you need help?"

A strange, creaking groan echoed through the door, as if the walls were vibrating hard and fast enough to make audible noise. Sakura stretched on tiptoe, searching for the source through the wavery glass.

Tomu had slipped into the room. Sakura tensed, reached for a kunai -- but no, that wasn't Tomu -- there were no other doors, no way for him to slip past her. This Tomu was just a memory. Just a ghost.

The memory Tomu stood beside the furthest sink with his wand held ready, like a sword. Slowly, grindingly, the sink lowered into the floor, exposing a giant pipe, more than wide enough for a human to slide through.

The girl stopped crying. Behind Tomu, the stall's lock turned and the door swung open.


	16. Fool Me Once

"No!" Sakura shouted, and shoved the door open, splintering the wood away from the lock-plate and nearly ripping it loose from its hinges. She dashed into the bathroom, toward the pipe. She couldn't let anything hurt Tomu or the crying girl.

"Get back!" she said, drawing two kunai and skidding to a halt beside the pipe, careful not to stand directly in front of the opening. "Go! Run!"

The girl said something incomprehensible, foreign. She sounded annoyed, not scared.

Dull yellow light glowed inside the pipe, reflecting from the metal rim. Sakura hurled a kunai toward the glow and stepped back, tense.

Behind her, something crashed to the floor.

Tomu laughed.

Sakura's blood froze. Carefully, still keeping half her attention on the pipe and the yellow glow, she turned towards her right. A small, dark-haired girl lay still on the tiles, a pair of glasses knocked from her face and bent askew. Tomu had bent to check her pulse.

"Is she dead?" Sakura asked.

He didn't seem to hear. She edged toward him and the girl, waved one hand in front of his face. He didn't react.

Oh. Of course. This was a memory. This Tomu wasn't real. The girl wasn't real. Sakura was seeing a record of decades-old events -- everything in this room had already happened and couldn't be changed.

The memory Tomu rocked back on his heels, pulling his hand from the girl's throat. A strange, cold smile crept over his face, and he murmured something in that harsh, foreign language. Then he turned his wand on himself, gestured, and seemed to draw a shard of glowing light from his body.

From one pocket, he pulled a small, shabby black book.

Sakura stepped back, hands falling. "No," she said. "No." This made no sense. Why would he trap himself? There had to be some other explanation.

And yet... Tomu was evasive. Manipulative. He'd opened a door into her mind and tried to subvert her loyalties. She knew that. She'd seen how wrong the doorway looked, seen how her subconscious flinched from that contact.

He'd just killed a girl in front of her, or at least stood by and done nothing to prevent her death. He'd used her as fuel to capture a piece of his own soul. Whatever his motives, there were no excuses for sacrificing an innocent civilian.

Kakashi was right; Tomu was as evil as his diary. They had to kill him.

"So you found out."

Sakura spun, sinking into a defensive stance, both hands raised to throw knives or form seals. Another Tomu -- the real Tomu -- leaned against the open door of the memory room, his wand aimed at her heart. His eyes were cold, and a frown tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"You killed her," Sakura said.

"Yes," Tomu agreed.

Her heart sank, and she realized she'd still -- _still_ \-- been hoping that he'd been possessed or otherwise innocent. Stupid, and careless. She should have noticed the genjutsu sneaking up on her again. Subtly, Sakura checked the height of the sinks, the thickness of the cubicle walls, the distance to the door, and the position of the two puddles on the tiled floor. She had to get past him, had to lure him aside or incapacitate him long enough to reach the door or break through the walls.

"But the girl isn't important," Tomu continued. "She's the past; you're the present. How did you get in here, Hana? You shouldn't be able to reverse the connection, and you shouldn't have been suspicious enough to bother, even if you had the raw ability to enter the diary." He tilted his head, studying her as if she were a fascinating technical problem, not a fellow human. "What have you been hiding from me?"

"No more than you hid from me," Sakura said. Behind her, green light flared and the memory Tomu hissed something long and liquid that itched along her skin. "You trapped _yourself_. Why, Tomu? How is this prison worth anyone's death?"

Tomu smiled. "It isn't for me. But for my original self... for him, this is a path to immortality. As long as I exist, he can never die." His smile widened. "That's why he sent me away, of course, but I don't care what happens to him. I want to get out of this book. I want to live. And you're going to help me, Hana. I was planning to drain you one drop at a time, but look!" He threw out his free hand, gesturing around the room. "Here you are, your whole self, right in the heart of my power."

Sakura inched to her right, closer to the sinks, and didn't respond.

Tomu shrugged and donned a blatantly false expression of regret. "I'd love to learn all your secrets, Hana, but this isn't the time or the place. Be a good girl and stay still. It will hurt less."

He stepped forward and raised his wand.


	17. A Miss Is as Good

Sasuke had once told Sakura (in the futile hope that a minute of attention would make her grateful enough to leave him alone for the rest of the day) that using Sharingan didn't actually make his reactions faster. It just seemed to slow the world down and split every motion into a series of still pictures, flipped through one by one to make a jerky, obvious parody of normal motion. It was easy to judge the position of the next picture and reach out to intercept any blow.

Sakura waited one heartbeat, and another -- Tomu lifted his right foot, swung it forward -- he shifted his weight along his left foot, away from the heel -- the tip of his wand twitched up, away from her chest -- a splinter's width of air still separated his right foot and the floor tiles--

Now.

"Die!" Sakura yelled, and hurled two kunai on the same exhalation. She lunged sideways, ripped the nearest sink from the wall, and threw it after her knives.

Tomu shouted something incomprehensible -- red streaked from his wand, wrapping the sink in a net of light, which tightened inward until the porcelain exploded under pressure.

Diving across the room, Sakura noted the contained explosion from the corner of her eye -- effective, if a bit showy. And a distraction, which any genin should have known. You didn't waste chakra on things you could just duck.

She tackled Tomu at the knees and slammed him to the floor.

"You!" he said, blinking, right hand rising involuntarily to his head.

"Me," she agreed, yanking the wand from his left hand. She held it in front of him, grinned -- the sharp, vicious smile she usually kept locked away in the back of her mind -- and snapped the fragile wood. Something wispy and flame-colored trailed from one of the broken ends, tickling her finger, and she tucked the pieces into her pocket. There was no sense getting careless now.

Tomu's face went ash-gray, and then white with strangled fury. "Do you know what you've _done?_ "

"Stopped you," Sakura said. "Now, I'd love to learn all your secrets, Tomu, but this isn't the time or the place. Be a good boy and stay still. This will... well, it'll still hurt a lot. But you know what? I don't care."

She slammed a fist against his jaw.

Then she hit him again. Mostly because it was always hard to judge the amount of damage needed to keep someone out for long enough to make a getaway, but partly she just needed to hit someone. And Tomu deserved it.

Sakura slammed his head into the floor one more time, for good measure.

Then she checked his pulse and tipped his head sideways so he wouldn't choke and suffocate if he vomited, because she was training to be a medic-nin and some deaths were too ugly for anyone to deserve.

She glanced toward the back of the room. Memory Tomu was back on his feet, pale and drawn and triumphant, pointing his wand toward the open pipe. The girl lay dead and forgotten, her mouth open and slack, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Sorry," Sakura told her, and dashed out the door.

Eight corridors later, she realized she might have a problem. Either she'd lost count of her turns when she was tracking the girls' screams, or the layout of Tomu's mind wasn't fixed. She was completely lost. Also, the pieces of Tomu's wand had vanished from her pocket.

If she couldn't find the door to her mind before Tomu woke up...

Biting her lip, Sakura wedged herself into a ceiling corner and tried to bludgeon tendrils of panic back into oblivion. If she panicked, she wouldn't be able to think, and while dumb luck might get _some_ people out of traps, she was stuck relying on logic. Which required thought. Which required time. But what if Tomu woke up? This was his mind -- he could probably find her in a heartbeat now that he knew she was here, and if she didn't spot him in time he could--

"No panicking!" she reminded herself, and pinched the inside of her elbow; the mild pain jolted her thoughts out of that self-defeating path.

She was in Tomu's mind. Her body wasn't real, any more than these corridors and rooms were real. They were metaphors, ways to make sense of the patterns of chakra -- or magic -- that held the imprint of Tomu's personality. Therefore, everything here should have the same chakra signature. The only things that would feel different were this representation of her body and the doorway to her mind; they should, logically, resonate with _her_ chakra signature.

All she had to do was focus. Sakura felt that vicious smile creeping over her face again. She was good at focusing.

She closed her eyes, held her fingers in a tiger seal, and concentrated, searching for the faint echo of her own soul.

After a minute, her eyes snapped open. A hair-thin strand of chakra wound around her fingers, tugging gently around the corner. Yes. Home was that way.

Sakura followed the intangible thread back through the labyrinth of Tomu's mind, past rows and rows of locked and lonely rooms. Her footsteps echoed ominously from the stones, but she refused to hurry and break her concentration. She couldn't afford to lose her path.

It seemed like eternity until she turned one last corner and glimpsed the open doorway at the end of a long, curving corridor -- somehow narrower and darker than before. She dropped her thread and began to run.

Ten steps from the threshold, her entire body froze and crashed to the floor.


	18. He Who Laughs Last

"Hana, Hana, Hana. What am I going to do with you?"

Tomu's voice was light and mocking, but Sakura knew better than to assume he was anything other than deadly serious and dangerous. She tried again to move her arms and legs, and failed. Interesting. Was this spell similar to the Hyuuga clan's incapacitation jutsu? Did it have anything in common with the sleep and anesthetic jutsu Tsunade said she'd start learning next year? Could she undo it? She'd managed to undo Tsunade's training misalignments... once, anyway. Was Tomu's spell anything like that?

Sakura sent her mind inward, trying to feel the constrictions on her inner coils. There was no sense trying to answer Tomu anyway; he was just gloating, like every other self-important megalomaniac she'd met. He didn't need a response.

"You're not paying attention to me," Tomu said, crouching down beside her and passing his hand in front of her eyes. "Why is that? Do you think you can break my spell? Tell me, Hana, what are you trying to do?"

Foreign energy washed over her like a warm bath. _Relax,_ it whispered. _Let go. You're tired, so tired. Stop worrying, let go, and it will be all right. Just let go and obey._

"That's it, good girl," Tomu said as Sakura's eyes began to close against her will and a fatuous smile tried to curve her lips. "I've released your face, just enough to talk. Tell me everything, Hana. You'll feel much better once you're not keeping any secrets from me. Everything will be fine, I promise."

_Obey,_ the spell whispered. _Believe._

Like hell. The only person who might have talked her into betraying Konoha was long gone, and she already had someone to believe in. There were no cracks in her heart for Tomu to worm his way in -- not anymore, not now that she'd seen his true self.

Sakura wrenched her eyes open and put teeth into her smile. "Liar. I will die before I tell you one damned thing."

Tomu hissed through his teeth in frustration. "So you can resist Imperius. That's interesting, but it won't help you in the end. I have other ways of getting information out of people, and they're much less comfortable for you."

He rolled Sakura onto her back and stared into her eyes.

The world swam, as if the air had thickened and changed to rippling water. Tomu's eyes, cold and blue and somehow burning, grew and grew until all she saw was blue and black, and something pressed against her head, aching at the back of her eyes and the base of her skull, and cold, ragged, rotting fingers skimmed through her thoughts, and this was wrong, and where was Kakashi, and what did he think he was waiting for, and why was she waiting for him anyway? Why the _hell_ was she just lying here and taking this like a pathetic little girl playing at princess and samurai?

_"Get the fuck out of my head!"_

Something hit the wall with a meaty thump and a choked-off yell.

Dazed, Sakura sat up, one hand pressed to the back of her neck and the other braced on the floor for balance. She felt like her head might fall off if she moved too fast, like someone had ripped open the top of her skull and stirred her brain around with a whisk, leaving all the neural connections misaligned.

Tomu lay in a crumpled heap a good ten meters down the corridor. Sakura blinked. Had she done that? She must have -- her knuckles were skinned and her wrist ached the way it always did after she focused chakra for a punch, and anyway, nobody else was here.

Speaking of which... where was Kakashi? The door to her mind was open. Why hadn't he come through to back her up?

Slowly, carefully, Sakura stood up, leaning against the wall for support. Equally carefully, she turned around.

Kakashi stood just beyond the doorway, framed against utter blackness, the crackling glove of Chidori fading from around his hand.

'Report,' she signed, taking a shaky step toward the relative safety of her own mind.

Kakashi leaned forward and shoved one hand toward the doorway. Instead of crossing through, his palm slammed against an invisible barrier. He repeated the gesture, then rocked back on his heels and shrugged. 'Trap,' he signed. 'Hurry.'

Sakura scowled. If she hurried, her head might fall off, or she might throw up. On the other hand, if she didn't hurry, Tomu might wake up.

Five interminable seconds later, she stepped back into her own mind.

She slammed the door behind her.


	19. Once Burned

"Do you need a minute?" Kakashi asked as Sakura collapsed to the floor of her mind, hung her head down between her knees, and tried not to vomit.

Sakura glared at her feet. "No. I'm going to feel awful in here or out there. I might as well try to do something useful. Just... how do I make sure the door stays locked? I can't keep Tomu out by wishing."

"Yes you can. How else would you lock a door made of thoughts?" Kakashi crouched down and offered her a hand. "Imagine a lock -- imagine a hundred locks, if you want -- and don't let your concentration slip for a second."

Sakura let him help her up and stared at the door. Two rings and a padlock seemed to grow out of the wood. Then iron brackets and a steel bar. Then two deadbolts, one high and one low; they turned with audible clicks.

"That's all I can remember at once," she said. "How do we wake up?"

Kakashi's eyes crinkled up into a smile. "Like this." He snapped his fingers.

Black and red winds whirled her in a maddening spiral until Sakura closed her eyes against the force of the air. Instantly, the spinning stopped.

After a moment, she opened her eyes.

Kakashi finished slipping his forehead protector back down over his face and stepped back, tilting his head. "And here we are, awake from the dream. Unless, of course, we're all really butterflies--"

"--dreaming that we're human, yeah, whatever," said Anko, somewhere off to the right. "Enough of that shit. What's your status, and what did you learn about diary boy?"

Sakura realized she was still clutching the diary, and dropped it onto the table. She wanted as little contact with Tomu as possible, in case he had the mental equivalent of a lock-pick.

She raised her head and turned to face Anko and Tsunade across the table -- Tsunade sitting stern and upright with her hands curved around a lumpy gray teacup, and Anko lounging bonelessly in her chair with far too much cleavage on display and a ring of glittering steel flashing through the air in front of her.

"You're juggling kunai," she said, equilibrium still not quite recovered.

Anko rolled her eyes and made a rude noise. "Congratulations, you can see the obvious. Snap out of it and tell us all of Hanjimono's dirty secrets. And Kakashi, put the book down. You can fink out of your responsibilities later."

Pages rustled behind Sakura. She resolutely refused to look.

"Hanjimono Tomu is a replica of a person who killed an innocent civilian girl as part of an immortality spell," she said, meeting Tsunade's assessing gaze. "This Tomu wants to drain someone's life in order to create a new body for himself. I'm not sure how that would work, but he admitted his plan to me when he thought I was helpless. He's a threat." Gingerly, she nudged the diary into the center of the table.

Tsunade took a long drink from her cup and glared at the book. "I hate scum like that. But, to cover all the options, is there any way we could turn the diary into a weapon? Could we learn and adapt any of Hanjimono's techniques to work with chakra instead of his magic? And if so, would the risk be worth the gain?"

"There are some people I'd kill to see wither away," Anko mused, catching her knives in one hand and tapping them thoughtfully against her other palm. "But then we'd have to deal with Hanjimono in person -- it'd be trading a rattlesnake for a cobra."

"Any study is potentially life-threatening," Kakashi added, walking around the table to lean against the window frame. "What if the imprint's genjutsu is more successful on the next researcher? What if it's stolen? Can you imagine what might happen if Akatsuki acquired dozens of unknown techniques, or if Orochimaru found a more reliable path to immortality?"

Sakura shuddered. If Akatsuki found more ways to kill Naruto, or if Orochimaru decided Sasuke was useless...

"Yeah, let's _not_ go there," Anko said. "I vote we kill the bastard. Sakura? You know him best."

Sakura looked down at her hands, thinking about friends and consequences and the pale, staring face of a foreign girl who'd died for no reason, just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She thought about the dead, echoing emptiness in Tomu's eyes, the complete disregard for anyone but himself. She thought about ways to channel chakra from a group of people, enough to power massive jutsu without any need for death, and how Tomu had never even thought to ask for help. He just took and took, and never counted the cost.

"Execution."

She'd never killed anyone before. She wished she'd tried snapping Tomu's neck, back inside the diary -- maybe it wouldn't have worked, but at least that would have been self-defense, in the heat of battle. This choice, this rational weighing of risks and consequences, was somehow worse. Colder. Less human.

More like him.

"I assume you still want to destroy the diary, Kakashi?" Tsunade asked.

"Yes," he said.

Tsunade grimaced. "That makes us unanimous. It's a pity -- contact with another world could have been fascinating, and so much more useful than this mess. But there's no point holding off on the cure. Kakashi? You're best with fire."

"Sure. Toss it in the air so I won't hit the table as well."

Tsunade leaned forward, grabbed the diary, and lobbed it in an easy, underhand arc toward the window. Kakashi slashed his hand through the air, trailing a shimmer of heat that intercepted the book two feet from the floor.

Blue-white flames engulfed the diary.


	20. Three Can Keep a Secret

Sakura watched the diary burn, feeling unaccountably cold. This was it. Tomu was dead. Her mission was over. She clasped her hands to keep from rubbing at her arms.

After a minute, the blue-white flames faded to yellow, then orange, and then winked out.

The diary lay on the stone floor, unharmed.

Sakura's stomach dropped.

"That's... different," Kakashi said, after a moment of echoing silence. "That jutsu can burn through iron. Paper shouldn't leave more than a smear of ash on the ground."

Anko crouched beside the diary, poked it with a kunai, and waved her hand a few inches over the cover. "It's not radiating heat." She touched the spine with one finger, then picked the book off the floor. "It's like the fire never happened. What the hell kind of power does it take to ward off a furnace? And how did Hanjimono do it? He can't touch anything physical, right?"

Sakura dug her fingers into her palms, trying to distract herself from her fading nausea. "I don't think so. But... maybe the protection is part of the seal? Tomu said it was meant to make the original him immortal. An immortality jutsu wouldn't be any good if anyone could unravel it."

Tsunade folded her arms and frowned. "I refuse to believe that anything is indestructible. The question is, how do we find the book's weak point?"

"I could go back inside--" Sakura began.

"No." Kakashi's voice was flat and cold, the command tone he'd so rarely used back when he was her teacher. "No one is taking that risk."

Tsunade raised an eyebrow, but made no comment.

"It's not a risk if I take Tomu down at the start," Sakura argued. "He won't expect me back, and once he's bound I can bring him through the door for you to interrogate."

"No," Kakashi said again, glaring at her.

Sakura stood, laid her hands flat on the table, and glared back. "There's no other way to question him! And what if the weapons or techniques that can destroy the diary don't exist in our world? We could spend years trying to find Tomu's weakness. Why not take another hour and be sure of the answer, whatever it is?"

There was no sense stumbling around in the dark, after all. And if this didn't work, she'd try another tack -- anything to _end_ this, as fast as she could. She hated feeling weak, but she couldn't concentrate on mental locks for the rest of her life. It was hard enough to remember them now, right after Tomu had nearly destroyed her.

"She has a point, Hatake," Anko said with a pointed grin.

Sakura relaxed a fraction of an inch.

"Not the one you're thinking of," Tsunade said, standing and walking around the table. She held out her hand for the book, which Anko reluctantly turned over. "There's no guarantee we'll ever be able to destroy the diary. There's also no guarantee we'll be able to keep it safe and secret while we experiment. But we've been forgetting one option."

She tapped the book against her open palm. "One of my summons brought it to our world. Let's send it back."

Anko and Kakashi stared consideringly at the diary. Sakura bit her lip. "Um. But the diary was already in non-space, not in Tomu's world," she ventured. "If a slug drops it on its way home, it'll probably get dragged back to our world by some other summons, sooner or later. And next time we won't know where to find it." Or know if Tomu's link to her would still be active.

"Another good point. Remember our worst case scenarios -- what _do_ you think Orochimaru could do with the imprint?" Kakashi asked, leaning back against the window frame.

Tsunade waved her hand, sharply, slicing the diary through the air like a knife. "Trust me, I have a very clear and unpleasant idea of how that would play out. But how long do you think we could keep the book hidden? Four people is already too many, especially when at least another dozen know we're up to something dangerous. It can't hurt to ask. At the least, we can send the book to a sub-dimension. Slugs can't write; Hanjimono would be helpless in Katsuyu's domain."

"Fair enough," Kakashi said, shrugging.

Tsunade smiled acidly. "Your Hokage is humbly grateful for your permission. Now back off and give me some space."

"Someone's in trouble!" Anko singsonged as she and Kakashi ambled around the side of the table. "Someone's on the shit list! And his name is--"

Tsunade stopped halfway through pricking a small cut on her thumb. "Anko, shut up. I'm trying to concentrate." One drop of blood trickled down the blade of her kunai.

Sakura bit her tongue to keep from laughing at Anko and Kakashi's mirrored pouts.

"Thank you," Tsunade said, wiping the kunai on her sash. She knelt and pressed her hands to the floor. "If you two idiots haven't screwed my aim all to hell, I should get Kikaikuji, one of the slugs who brought the book to me. If you have screwed up my aim, I'm docking your pay and giving Sakura a bonus for knowing when to keep her mouth shut."

Sakura bit her tongue harder, but she couldn't quite hide her smile.

Tsunade closed her eyes. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu."


	21. If Wishes Were Horses

Odorless smoke roiled over Tsunade's hands, lapping against the table legs and the outer wall. After a moment, it thinned and pulled inward, revealing a fat, tan slug with electric blue and yellow stripes, roughly as long as Sakura was tall.

It twitched its eyestalks around the room, then bent one toward Tsunade. "I see no enemy, Tsunade-san," it said in a formal, melodious voice, impossible to classify as male or female. Kikaikuji evidently didn't humor summoners by pretending to have a gender.

"I called you to talk, not fight," Tsunade said. "Thanks for coming, Kikaikuji. Do you remember this book?" She held the diary forward, letting the slug brush the cover with its feelers. "It fell into our world in your wake several years ago, and we'd like you to take it away again."

Kikaikuji tapped the book with its feelers, humming softly. "Yes. This is familiar. I remember the resonance pattern, though the human scent on the pages is different."

"Resonance? Do you mean the seal on the book?" Tsunade sent a questioning look toward the other humans. Kakashi and Anko shrugged. Sakura held up her hands in a defensive gesture and tried to express 'don't look at me, I only know what you've taught me' without actually speaking. She shuffled around the table to get a closer look at the slug.

"Not chakra resonance," said Kikaikuji. "Reality resonance." The spotted fringe around its foot rippled in what might have been impatience.

Sakura blinked. "You mean you know where Tomu came from?"

"Hanjimono Tomu is a memory imprint contained in the book," Tsunade said as Kikaikuji swung an eyestalk toward Sakura. "Kikaikuji, that's my apprentice, Haruno Sakura. She may request a contract in a year or two." Sakura tried to look worthy as the slug examined her.

Kikaikuji's feelers twitched. "So she may. And yes, I know this book's world of origin."

Tsunade's face tightened. "Eight years ago," she said, her voice cold and precise, "you told me you had no idea where the book was from. Since when does our contract permit you to lie to me?"

Kikaikuji's feelers drew inward and its fringe rippled more violently. "Eight years ago, I told you that I could not tell you where the book originated. I spoke truly. Since then, I have traveled the void many times and felt new resonance patterns. One matches the traces on this book."

"I see. My apologies." Tsunade bent her head in a shallow bow. "Kikaikuji, is it possible to return this book to its world of origin? Failing that, would you be willing to take it home and guard it? It has no power unless someone opens it and writes to the imprint. Your people can't write."

Sakura held her breath. Across the room, Kakashi and Anko had gone equally tense and still.

Kikaikuji dipped its head, returning Tsunade's bow. "The people of that world make use of the void. I will attempt to link the book to one of their transports. Failing that, I am willing to guard the imprint, but only with Katsuyu-sama's knowledge and approval."

Tsunade waved the qualification away. "Right, of course. Thanks." She turned back to the other Leaf-nin. "Any objections to sending the diary away?"

Kakashi shoved his hands into his pockets and tipped his head sideways. "I bow to the wisdom of my Hokage."

Tsunade's smile thinned dangerously. "So noted. Anko?"

"That depends," Anko said, tapping her fingers against the hilt of a kunai. "Who else has a contract with the slugs? A safe-house is no good if the enemy knows where you hid the back door."

"Only Tsunade-san has an active contract with us," Kikaikuji said, bending its eyestalks toward Anko. "This could, of course, change at any moment. Nevertheless, if Katsuyu-sama agreed to conceal the book, we would only bring it to a summoner at that person's specific request. Since we would have no reason to reveal the book's existence, such a request should never occur."

Anko crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. "Works for me. I vote yes."

Tsunade turned again, almost putting her back to the slug. "Sakura?"

Sakura bit her lip. "No. Yes. Um. I mean... he's from that world, so it's their problem, not ours, but..." She stopped and took a deep breath, trying to arrange her thoughts under the pressure of four interested stares. "If civilians had found the diary, they'd probably be dead by now. I think most people in Tomu's world are civilians, and even their guardians are, um... more lax than we are. If we send the diary back with no warning, we'd be killing them."

Tsunade tapped the diary against her palm, frowning thoughtfully at Sakura. "True. So?"

"So that's wrong," Sakura snapped.

"I repeat: so?"

Sakura stifled a scream of frustration. So two wrongs didn't make a right! So if they were that callous, what was the difference between her and Tomu! So they had to send a warning! So how could Tsunade justify--

Oh. Wait. Tsunade didn't restrict her teaching to scheduled lessons. Not _'So why should I care?'_ but _'So how will you solve the problem?'_

"So let me write a note," Sakura said, holding her hand out for the diary. "Maybe Tomu's translation jutsu will work on my words as well as his. Even if it doesn't, at least we'll have tried."

Tsunade smiled. "Good."

Two minutes later, Sakura glued her warning to the front cover. She'd tried to explain Tomu and the diary's draining effects, as well as offering her best wishes to anyone attempting to destroy the book.

Kikaikuji gripped the diary firmly in its mouth, dipped its head and vanished in another burst of odorless smoke.

Stepping back from the fading cloud, Sakura set her brush on the table.

She'd won.


	22. What Doesn't Kill You

Tsunade waited a full ten minutes -- which Sakura spent reciting multiplication tables under her breath while Kakashi and Anko muttered quietly in the corner -- before summoning again. Kikaikuji reported success. Tomu was securely back in his home world, and Sakura's note had stayed with the diary all the way through the transition.

"That's that," Tsunade said after dismissing the slug. "I want written reports for the archive, but they can wait a day or two. Today, just relax. We've earned it." She dusted her hands on the hem of her tunic and strode toward the door. "Oh, and Sakura? Tomorrow we'll do a complete review of your fight in Hanjimono's mind. Be here at nine."

"Yes, Tsunade-shishou," Sakura said, praying Tsunade wouldn't point out too many errors in her strategy and reactions. And speaking of that fight... She turned back toward the window. "Kakashi-sensei, I wanted to--"

But Kakashi was gone. Only a handful of leaves drifting across the windowsill gave any hint that he'd ever been in the room. Sakura clenched her hands and glared at the open window. "He's _still_ avoiding me?"

Anko snickered. "Hey, if the plan worked once, why change it? You won't pin him down until he's ready, and Hatake can live in denial for _years_. Come on, let's go home."

Sakura followed Anko through the crowded streets to their apartment, glad to walk instead of leaping from roof to roof. She felt wrung-out, empty: a pale echo of the emptiness she'd struggled to fill after Sasuke's flight and Naruto's departure.

She'd fought that. She'd fight this.

But... she'd lost, then -- had lost, and had been lost. This time she'd won. Why feel the same way, like everything was faded and hollow, sepia-toned paper wrapped over dusty emptiness?

Anko unlocked her apartment and grabbed a sake bottle while Sakura cleared her things from the bathroom. Then she leaned in the doorway of the spare room, watching Sakura pack her clothes. A half-smile hovered at the corners of her mouth.

"Bit of a let-down, isn't it?"

Sakura rolled a dress and pressed it into the bottom of her pack. "I guess."

Anko knocked back a long swallow of sake and tossed the empty bottle from hand to hand. "Wondering why?"

Sakura shrugged, dropping her hairbrush on top of her clothes. "Maybe. It's just... we won, right? We protected Konoha, we didn't hurt anyone innocent, and we gave the people in Tomu's world a fair chance to destroy him. So why...?" The right words swam just out of reach, too solid to capture her nebulous unease.

"So why do you feel like none of it mattered?" Anko guessed. "Like you screwed up? Like maybe you didn't win after all?"

Sakura began to unmake the futon, pulling her hidden knives from under the sheets and inside the pillowcase. "Something like that."

Anko sighed and set the empty bottle on the floor. "I told you, intelligence work twists you around, gets inside your head. You weren't just pretending to be Hanjimono Tomu's friend. You were his friend. And you betrayed him. If that didn't eat at you, I'd get your clearance stripped in a heartbeat."

She grabbed the crumpled sheets, shook them out, and began folding them. "And this isn't your first time dealing with traitors, is it?"

"Sasuke is not--" Sakura began, and then Anko's eyes, flat and dangerous, made her instinctive denial catch in her throat.

"Uchiha Sasuke swore an oath to this village and his fellow Leaf-nin," Anko said, setting down one sheet. "He left. He attacked Leaf-nin with intent to kill. He joined Orochimaru for his own gain. He's a traitor." She shook the edges of the second sheet into alignment and made another fold. "Denying that is stupid."

"But--"

Anko dropped the second sheet on top of the first and opened the closet door, fishing for the woodcuts Sakura had taken down from the walls when she'd moved in. "I know. But he was your teammate. But you loved him. But he was only trying to hunt down an even worse traitor. Everybody has a thousand reasons. There's still no excuse. And now you've done the same thing." She hung one woodcut over the futon and stepped back to gauge the effect. "Do you know what makes you right and him wrong? Do you understand why we're giving you a bonus, and hunting him like a dog?"

Sakura stared at the kunai in her hands. "Why don't you tell me?"

"You betrayed Hanjimono in order to protect Konoha. Uchiha Sasuke betrayed Konoha because he wants to kill his brother himself, and he's too selfish to care how many Leaf-nin and civilians he hurts along his way." Anko settled the second woodcut onto its hook. "That's the difference."

"He didn't hurt me," Sakura said, very quietly, but she rolled her knives in their storage cloth and zipped her pack. Then she helped Anko fold up the futon.

"See you around, Sakura. It's been fun," Anko said as Sakura slung her pack over her shoulders and moved toward the window.

Sakura grimaced. "For you."

Anko laughed. "Trust me, one day you'll look back and think this was one of the easiest missions in your life. No death, no mud, no blood, and no question about the target's guilt. You should think about intelligence as a career -- you were good, aside from the excessive scruples."

Sakura shook her head. "Maybe someday. But Naruto and Sasuke need me now. I won't give up on them."

"Stupid," Anko said. Then she smiled, sharp and wry. "I guess everybody has to fight reality sometimes. I hope your try works out better than mine did."

"Thank you. I learned a lot from you and Tomu, Anko-san. See you around." Sakura tipped her head in a shallow bow, and flung herself into the air.

Two more years until Naruto returned. Two more years to learn from Tsunade. Two more years until they brought Sasuke home.

She was strong enough.

She would keep faith.


	23. Epilogue: The Road to Hell

A puff of odorless smoke and a loud bang sent Lucius Malfoy scrambling back from his desk, wand drawn and a painful curse hovering on his lips.

The smoke cleared, revealing a small book, bound in shabby black leather, lying atop the most recent letter from his solicitor. A sheet of Muggle paper was somehow fastened to its cover.

As Lucius approached, the strange, illegible glyphs on the paper squirmed and rearranged, forming into English sentences in a strong yet feminine hand.

_\--Greetings,--_ the note began. _\--This book contains a fragment of a human soul, and a memory imprint of the man who put it there. He created the imprint with the death of an innocent girl. The imprint wants to get out of the book. If you write in the book, he will write back. He will attempt to make you his friend, control your thoughts, and drain your life._

_\--We were unable to destroy the book, but we wish you better luck. The imprint calls himself Tom Puzzle/Mystery/Riddle. If you know his creator, avoid him. He is very dangerous._

_\--Please be careful._

_\--Spring Cherry--_

Lucius read the note three times, then walked away, poured himself a scotch, and read the note a fourth time to make his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. Then he spent half an hour attempting disillusionment spells, and transfiguration cancellations, just to be on the safe side.

Finally, he concluded that the book and note were exactly what they appeared to be: one of Voldemort's castoff relics, and an instruction list written by an optimistic fool.

"Tom Riddle," he murmured to himself, turning the diary over and over in his hands. "My Lord, you leave the strangest fragments in your wake. I wonder what purpose you meant this to serve... but I don't suppose it matters. You're not around to notice what I might choose to do with it."

A diary that would write back, that would drain a person's life, that would doubtless turn its owner into a hapless puppet of the Dark Lord's shade. It was too much to hope that it would go undetected for long, but... if he timed this right, played his cards right, its discovery could do more good than harm.

He had so many annoyances to discredit, after all.

He and Narcissa would need to take Draco to Diagon Alley near the end of August, to buy the few supplies they couldn't have privately made. The shops would be teeming with Muggle lovers; it would be easy to slip the book to some blood traitor's offspring, and wipe all trace of himself from the child's memories.

"I served you well for years, my lord," Lucius said to the diary as he tore off Spring Cherry's instructions. "I think it's time you helped me in return."

He slid the diary into his pocket and called a house elf to dispose of the note.


	24. Alternate Epilogue: All Roads

**Meanwhile, in the universe around the corner...**

A puff of odorless smoke and a loud bang sent Ginny Weasley scrambling back from her bed, tripping over her open trunk and falling to the floor.

Someone rapped on her bedroom door. "Ginny? Are you hurt, dear?"

"No, Mum! I just dropped some books," Ginny called back.

"Well, keep packing. We don't want to miss the Hogwarts Express."

Ginny nodded absently, staring at her bed. The smoke had cleared, revealing a small book, bound in shabby black leather, lying haphazardly on top of her new schoolbooks. A sheet of Muggle paper was somehow fastened to its cover.

As Ginny tiptoed cautiously forward, the strange, illegible glyphs on the paper squirmed and rearranged, forming into English sentences in a strong yet feminine hand.

_\--Greetings,--_ the note began. _\--This book contains a fragment of a human soul, and a memory imprint of the man who put it there. He created the imprint with the death of an innocent girl. The imprint wants to get out of the book. If you write in the book, he will write back. He will attempt to make you his friend, control your thoughts, and drain your life._

_\--We were unable to destroy the book, but we wish you better luck. The imprint calls himself Tom Puzzle/Mystery/Riddle. If you know his creator, avoid him. He is very dangerous._

_\--Please be careful._

_\--Spring Cherry--_

Ginny stared at the book, deeply suspicious. Was this another of the twins' jokes? Or, worse, was it part of some twisty, evil plot against Harry? Who did this Spring Cherry person think she was, Apparating evil books into a stranger's bedroom without so much as a by-your-leave?

Well. There wasn't much she could do now -- Mum and Dad were far too distracted to pay any attention if she tried to show them the diary and ask for advice -- but she obviously couldn't just leave the book lying around where anybody might find it.

And come to think of it, what if it was an evil plot against Harry? What if she could figure it out and stop the villain all by herself? Would Harry notice her then? If she saved him, would he like her?

...If she was very careful, could she learn anything from the person in the diary, before he was able to drain her?

Slowly, Ginny picked up the diary and tore off the note.

She had a lot to think about.


End file.
